Monthly Archives

March 2009

Mar 31 2009
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Video of the Week XI: Architecture & energy 1

By Video of the Week

Amid all of the hooha surrounding our Supreme Court – symbols of power, propaganda, and hair loss – we should take time out to step back and really consider the dome issue in a more holistic way. You see, as this remarkable little film sets out, there really are supernatural consequences of building domes, which have no doubt been taken into account by the architects of our esteemed Supreme Court (who are obviously well up on their freemasonry)… The result being, of course, to hide the dome away in the interior so as not to expose bystanders to the energy drawn therein.

The energy will, of course, be invoked by the highest powers of judiciary in this country when passing judgment and handing down sentence, and will no doubt contribute to the building’s green star rating…

You may want to look away if notions of anti-christ, other dimensions, ley lines (must check Wellington’s position wrt this), or the new world order offend thine eyes…

m-d

Read More

Mar 28 2009
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Public Lecture @ Massey :: Jane Rendell :: Monday 30th

By EVENTS OTHER, Lecture

VENUE: Theatrette 10A02: Old Dominion Museum Building, Wellington

DATE & TIME: Monday 30th March at 5:30pm

Site-Writing: Subjectivity and Positionality in Criticism.

A rare opportunity to hear a guest lecture by Professor Jane Rendell (Bartlett, London)

She will speak on current research and design work in relation to interdisciplinary meeting points – feminist theory and architectural history, conceptual art practice and architectural design, art criticism and autobiographical writing.

Rendell’s paper will discuss two of her site-writing works, ‘Les Mots et Les Choses’ and ‘An Embellishment: Purdah’, in the context of relational aesthetics and dialogic practice citing the work of psychoanalytic practitioners/theorists Jessica Benjamin and Jean Laplanche.



Mar 27 2009
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Keith Ng – Being a dick about Earth Hour

By RANTING

This is hilarious – Keith Ng of the Public Address, in simple calculations, takes apart the whole Earth Hour project: 

 

How much can you save during Earth Hour? If you completely stop using electricity in your house, by my rough but generous estimate, you’d saved about 2,800Wh and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by 420g.

If you change a 75W incandescent lightbulb to an energy efficient equivalent, you’d save 65,700Wh per year (assuming it’s on for 3 hours a day). That works out to 9,950g of greenhouse gases. That’s one lightbulb…

Blacking out the entire house for one hour every year = 420g reduction per year.
Replacing one lightbulb with an energy saving equivalent = 9,950g reduction per year.

To put it indelicately: Fuck Earth Hour.

While I’m not quite in agreement with his support for banning incandescent bulbs (as CFL’s are not an equivalent replacement given the different qualities of light), Keith puts a very good argument forward, which is, as always, also very entertaining to read. I recommend reading the whole article…

m-d

Mar 25 2009
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Mock Deco

By EVENTS OTHER, RANTING

Following on from my previous comments on the great work of the Art Deco Trust in Napier, its also worth looking at the efforts, some good, some bad, of architects and others who have tried to replicate the art deco look in that city. There were 3 good heritage buildings knocked down, with two of them facing each other on the major street corner of Hastings St and Emerson St. The ANZ was one: it was replaced by a blueish mirror-glass cube with few redeeming efforts at all, except for its propensity to reflect back the facade of the BNZ opposite. Really, only one good thing came out of the demolition of the ANZ (and the National Bank building diagonally opposite): they provided the impetus for the creation of the Art Deco Trust.

What happened since then was truely bizarre: the BNZ moved out of its fine headquarters, to construct a new headquarters a few doors down, with the most hideously bad interpretation of Art Deco ever seen: we’ll not name or shame the architects: it was the 80s after all… Read More

Mar 25 2009
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Letting Dwell – exhibition by Tim Larkin & Luke Feast

By EVENTS OTHER, Exhibition

Where: The New Dowse, Lower Hutt

When: till May 10

Tim Larkin won the 2008 Deane Award for Decorative Arts with a proposal based on the long-redundant, yet highly efficient food safe. Larkin, writer Luke Feast and photographer Pete McColl, have created a body of work that explores the food safe and its unique architectural position between the indoors and outdoors.

‘Letting Dwell’ is drawn from Martin Heidegger’s important text (for architecture) ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’. The work shifts scales, from models to full works, but also imaginatively, from the scale of furniture to that of architecture.

Mar 25 2009
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One Day Sculpture Symposium : Jane Rendell (keynote)

By EVENTS OTHER, Lecture

CRITICAL SPATIAL PRACTICE : A KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY JANE RENDELL

THURSDAY 26 MARCH 2009, 6PM

SOUNDINGS THEATRE, TE PAPA, WELLINGTON

Keynote lecture costs $15 waged / $10 unwaged

Coordinators of the One Day Sculpture Project, hosted by Massey University as a Litmus Research Initiative, are please to invite the Wellington architectural community to participate in the symposium and/or keynote lecture by Jane Rendell (Director of Architectural Research, The Bartlett, Faculty of The Built Environment, University College London and author of Art and Architecture: A Place Between (I. B. Tauris, 2006))

Her talk will examine the concept of ‘critical spatial practice’ (Rendell, Art and Architecture, 2006) with respect to site-specific art practice, curating and criticism. It will look at definitions of key terms such as site, space and place, as well as dialectical relations of site and non-site/ site and off-site.

“The ONE DAY SCULPTURE symposium brings together leading international curators, cultural theorists and historians, participating artists, writers and curators to address the principal ideas and contexts that have informed the development of the series. The symposium will consider the issues underpinning the commissioning and production of temporary place-responsive artworks in the public domain.”